In many ways, Software as a Service (SaaS) and Hardware as a Service (HaaS) products are easier to define and fulfill. SaaS, effectively application hosting, is common enough for things like e-mail and web site hosting, and the advent of cloud computing and a hyper-connected user base has made distributed applications more and more feasible and efficient. Google’s document editing and sharing applications are one good example of this.

HaaS takes that same ‘black box’ approach to the role of hardware in an IT deployment, commoditizing computer components and defining them as their deliverables. Hard drives become disk space, memory and processor chips become resource percentages. When you make photocopies at your local office supply store, that’s HaaS in action. The customer pays a small cost for the use of an expensive machine, in this case a photocopier.

Platform as a Service merges SaaS and HaaS approaches, and is intended to function in similar capacities to managed dedicated servers. In theory this is an attractive idea, giving developers low cost, flexible platforms for application development, testing, and deployments. In practice, PaaS offerings often fall short in the most important requirements.

Unlike a pure OS installation, PaaS implements restrictions on modules, plug in access, and other system functions. This is an unavoidable result of having to protect customers from an individual user consuming too many resources or otherwise negatively impacting service. This can hamstring developers, who need full access to APIs, hardware assignments, and other deeper OS calls.

When developers work in a shared hosting environment, they not only have to re-write code to account for system level restrictions, often times they have to make a second pass at changes once they move to a production environment. The added overhead it takes to negate these restrictions can not only bleed away at project revenues, but it can work to the detriment of the application performance and functionality. Having to re-write and find workarounds for PaaS restrictions means that many more opportunities to introduce bugs and other problems.

Managed Dedicated Servers avoid the issue altogether. Developers have full system permissions to do exactly what they need to do without restrictions, which results in tighter coding and better performance. Factor in competitive, budget friendly pricing, and Managed Dedicated Servers become a cost effective, highly attractive option to restrictive shared hosting and PaaS products. A Managed Dedicated server solution can actually boost earnings, while at the same time giving clients a much greater level of service.

When we talk about local storage, we’re referring to disk drives that are physically attached to a computer or server. At minimum, this will contain the operating system and other software needed for the server to perform its desired functions. For companies just beginning to build a web presence, their local storage drives might also contain their web site files, databases, images, and other information, but as the website and applications grow this will cause scalability issues. When this occurs, the solution is to offload data storage from the server. The two technologies that are most common in the industry are NAS (Network Attached Storage) and SAN (Storage Area Networks), approaches that seem similar but server very different purposes.

NAS allows an administrator to attach a disk drive (or disk array) to a server through network communication protocols like Ethernet and TCP/IP and file system protocols like NFS. To the host system, the new storage space appears as an additional lettered drive. This solution is very popular for smaller home and office networks, offering a ‘plug and play’ solution for data storage and backups. Beyond a certain point, NAS will also suffer from scalability issues, and in high traffic situations performance becomes a concern.

SAN solutions use high speed Fibre Channel SCSI interfaces to attach RAID disk arrays to servers. The host sees a series of virtual disk drives, but the key difference is that these drives are viewed as locally attached devices, and system addressing is done at the disk block level, versus at the file level for NAS devices. This creates huge performance gains in environments that handle millions of transactions daily. It also allows for much faster and more thorough disaster recovery efforts, mitigating hardware dependencies through RAID and virtualization technologies.

Neither NAS nor SAN should be confused with an effective data backup solution, which may use one or the other or a different technology altogether. Your local storage and network storage are key components in your back up procedure, in the same sense that a weight bench or treadmill are important parts of a fitness routine, but they are not solutions in and of themselves.

Whether you are in the planning stages of your business web and application hosting services or are operating an established deployment, success will mean making smart decisions on how and where to use storage technologies to your best advantage. By understanding the roles of local storage, NAS/SAN, and how they integrate with your broader data backup and protection solutions, you can both secure critical business information and improve the overall user experience for customers and employees that interact with your website and hosted applications.

Protecting your business data is more important than ever due to all the catastrophic, unforeseen events that can damage or destroy your data permanently. Customer data, accounts payable, invoices, email and historical communications and business applications are the backbone of your company. Without your business data, your business could not move forward on a day to day basis. Imagine not being able to access your business data for an hour, a day, a month or possibly forever. Now you can protect your small business from data loss, prevent unplanned downtime, and prevent business failure. NaviSite, a leading dedicated and managed hosting services company, shows you how vulnerable your data can be without the proper backup plan in place.

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Depending on your point of view, you may focus on certain data center features when reviewing managed hosting and colocation providers. Some businesses are concerned with connectivity, others with environmental features, or physical security, or routing protocols; it’s a long and diverse list. At the heart of every individual concern is an overriding one and it’s the same for every business- uptime. As anyone who has spent time reading and evaluating service level guarantees (SLAs) knows, there are a lot of ways uptime can be defined.

Data center ratings ideally provide a standardized, industry accepted means to fairly and objectively review data centers, so customers can cut through the marketing hype and truly understand the differences when making important business decisions. In practice however, this hasn’t fully been the case.

Here’s the first problem- there are two different “industry standard” ratings systems, and likely more to come. SAS 70 Type I and II certifications refer to the rules followed by the Auditing Standards Board of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). Originally used for auditing profit and loss statements for organizations and businesses, the IT dependencies of large financial institutions has led to SAS 70 audits being done on service providers as part of regulatory requirements. Successful completion of those audits was viewed as a market advantage, and today a relatively obscure finance term has become an advertising bullet point.

Parallel to this, a ratings system was developed by the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) and The Uptime Institute more specific to data center operations. They established a tier system that focuses largely on physical infrastructure, so for example a Tier 1 facility fulfills minimal operating data center infrastructure requirements, while a Tier 4 facility has fault tolerant redundancy. While there has been some debate on the methodology used, both the AICPA ratings system and the Uptime Institute’s Tier system provide solid yardsticks to measure the uptime and reliability of a data center. As Shakespeare put it, there’s the rub.

Data center uptime does not necessarily equal uptime for your Website or hosted applications. In real world business situations, your success isn’t dependent on having four identical routers on standby in the event of an equipment failure; it’s dependent on the live person who is on site ready to answer your call in the middle of the night. That’s the difference you get with NaviSite. We’ve covered the infrastructure bases, gotten the SAS 70 Type II certification, and built the N + 1 redundancy into our data centers. We consider that merely the groundwork. Just as a 5 star restaurant rating is no guarantee you’ll be satisfied with your meal, when you are evaluating potential managed hosting and colocation providers, data center ratings should just be one item on a long checklist. At NaviSite, our top rated data centers are just step one of our total commitment to your success.

One of the first places to focus on when developing a monitoring system is for server and process uptime. As most of us have experienced firsthand with home computers, the fact that the computer is up and operational is no guarantee that your desired program is running. Identify all the critical applications it takes to deliver your web site and other services. This would include your HTTP server software, DNS, inbound and outbound mail server applications, authentication servers, and anything else particular to your environment. Your process and uptime monitoring scheme should also include IPs for internal and external server interfaces, routers and switches, network attached storage devices, and any other important hardware with an interface reachable with PING or other network monitoring protocols.

It is helpful for administrators to have visibility into the other systems that deliver your web site and network applications, for example, temperature, humidity, and power in the operating environment where your infrastructure is deployed. If you have peering with multiple backbone providers, you’d want to know the health of those network connections. You’ll also want to monitor resources like processor overhead, memory usage, and available storage space. When it comes to monitoring, more is almost always better, and the information you gain from monitoring processes has a hidden value.

Typically, monitoring is used as an alarm system, reactive in nature. A server crashes, the monitor detects that it’s offline, and a series of notification events is subsequently triggered. That system is tried and true, but it misses a larger point- when used effectively, monitoring systems don’t alert in the event of downtime, they prevent the downtime from occurring in the first place. This is where the secret weapon comes in.

A good monitoring system generates a tremendous amount of valuable information that can be used for a variety of business planning purposes. Utilization numbers can be graphed to plan for infrastructure upgrades. Traffic numbers can be analyzed to help gauge the effectiveness of sales and marketing initiatives. These statistics can also come in handy when it’s time to negotiate service contracts, by understanding which providers carry the bulk of your customer traffic. The sum total of all this is a tremendous advantage when coordinating activities across different teams in your organization.

Here’s a real world example- your marketing group lands a featured role in a high profile event that will showcase your company to a new customer base. They confer with the IT group, who uses the information gleaned from monitoring processes to discover that projected upgrades will need to happen right around the same time as the scheduled event. The necessary upgrades are accelerated by several weeks, putting the company in an optimal position to make a strong impression. Without the advantage of a strong monitoring procedure, this was a potential disaster.

That’s the kind of monitoring edge you get included with all of NaviSite’s managed and dedicated hosting services. Our team of 24/7/365 Always There ™ engineers isn’t just watching for systems to fail, they are proactively monitoring to head off potential failures, ensuring your performance and availability. It’s just one more way that NaviSite is totally committed to your success.

Here’s the paradox- it doesn’t matter what product or services you sell, success in the 21st century marketplace is largely dependent on efficient and flexible IT solutions. The upshot of this is businesses have to make a choice- hire and train the personnel and acquire the hardware and bandwidth needed to deploy and manage all their IT needs in house, or outsource those needs to a quality application host. SMBs that don’t have money to burn smartly turn to outsourcing as the answer.

SaaS, or Software as a Service, takes an end user perspective on what software should accomplish and the best way to deliver on those requirements. To take a simplistic view- people don’t want to own word processing software, they want to create and edit documents. Purchasing and installing a word processing application (as well as the computer to run it on) are the steps needed to do that, and until recently that’s been the only option.

SaaS application hosting says that ownership isn’t the only option, and in most cases it’s not even a good option. Unless IT services are your core business function, you have highly trained personnel on staff, state of the art hardware and software that’s already purchased and licensed, ample network connectivity and a fully redundant datacenter to house everything, it’s virtually impossible to provide an acceptable level of those services without breaking the budget. Much more likely is the prospect of having an inferior IT deployment that decimates bottom line revenues, and which provides no competitive advantages.

When you outsource IT functions to a quality SaaS application hosting provider, you leverage significant economies of scale, and reap tremendous benefits as a result. It’s an easy list to fill out- eliminating CapEx for servers and related hardware, gaining 24/7/365 access to trained and certified engineers, and enjoying the performance and reliability of backbone connectivity and an environmentally secure, UPS backed datacenter just to name a few. SaaS application hosting also has a less obvious, but potentially more valuable benefit- an unprecedented level of control over IT costs.

The typical IT build/upgrade cycle looks like this- deploy more infrastructure than you need, grow into it, exceed capacity, repeat. It’s a model that’s been dictated by suppliers and accounting departments, not by business planners. It’s also terribly inefficient. At one end of the scale you are overpaying for your IT services, and at the other end you’re being poorly served. Both situations bleed away profits, and your business spends far too little time in the sweet spot of optimized price and service levels.

SaaS flips that scenario, allowing for true ‘pay as you go’ pricing, and ensuring that every dollar spent is contributing to the bottom line. Application deployments are truly scalable, and allow decision makers to get out of the cycle of overbuild and over utilize. If your business hasn’t already incorporated SaaS application hosting into your IT infrastructure, you are facing a serious and growing disadvantage. Take steps to fix that today, and learn how SaaS can boost profits and cut operating costs for your business.

As maddening as it can be to lose personal data, when it comes to your business it’s a mistake that could be catastrophic. As a result, data backup solutions are a multi-million dollar industry, and to be sure, there are many options to consider. From automated robotic tape rotation machines to software driven RAID disc arrays, there are solutions to fit any scenario. Unfortunately they also share a common weakness: unless your core business actually is data backup, managing your backup solution in house assumes responsibility for a complex process without the human resources it takes to do it correctly. That’s a complicated way of saying if you handle your own backups, chances are you’re going to run into Murphy’s Law, and it won’t be pretty.

Smart companies know it’s more cost effective and efficient to outsource needs that don’t fall under their primary skill sets. This is especially true when it comes to the Information Technology component of a business. In a lean economy, it makes no sense to invest time and money in equipment and training for things that don’t generate revenue. Outsourcing IT needs to a managed dedicated and virtual server host isn’t simply cost effective, it adds value to those budget lines by doing the job better than you would otherwise be able to. Outsourcing to an enterprise class provider like NaviSite increases those benefits exponentially.

It starts with NaviSite’s Always There™ support. It’s more than a slogan; it means live people, on site, 24/7/365. Consider the cost of around the clock IT staff, and the economies of scale gained from outsourcing become readily apparent. As it pertains to your data security, it means a backup solution that’s fully managed and able to meet even the most rigorous requirements. You’re able to choose what you want backed up, when you want it backed up, and how long you want it retained. File restorations are fast, easy, and hassle free, and pay as you go pricing is designed to fit every budget.

Leveraging managed services to protect your data should go further than websites, applications, databases or other key information. It’s important to remember the heart of most modern business communications: e-mail. A thorough backup solution needs to include e-mail, and the best, most flexible way to accomplish that is with a managed, hosted Exchange service. The benefits of a hosted mail service over a traditional POP3 e-mail account is evident in the widespread popularity of services like those offered by Google and Yahoo, but those services don’t come with the robust features and service level guarantees that businesses require. Managed hosted Exchange from NaviSite isn’t just backed by a tough SLA, it’s delivered on world class hardware and network infrastructure, and easily integrated with a larger data backup strategy.

For most businesses, providing reliable data backup is a losing proposition, consuming a disproportionate amount of resources and, in true Murphy’s Law fashion, breaking down at the most inopportune times. Done correctly, backups should be a transparent, set it and forget it procedure that just works. The answer is outsourcing that backup solution and other related critical services to an enterprise class provider like NaviSite.

Measure twice, cut once
Whether you’re migrating a simple one server website or a complex multi server platform, the devil is in the details. That means not only a lot of the obvious information gathering (IP addresses, host names, DNS entries), it also means combing through every line of code to identify any reference to the current host that will break post migration, to detail any directory structure artifacts and other legacy inconsistencies, and to clean up those issues well in advance of any changes. Once you’re confident that the site is fully clear, lock it down to prevent any changes during the migration process. For complex sites with lots of moving parts this may take coordination with several departments, but it’s critical to draw a line in the sand at some point to prevent version management headaches.

Communicate, communicate, communicate
There’s no such thing as too much communication when it comes to big changes that will impact lots of people. Ideally your site migration will be perfectly transparent to all users, and if that’s the case than all that communication was a great opportunity to tell customers and employees about changes made to improve their experience. More importantly, if there are hiccups during the migration, strong upfront communication will eliminate confusion and mitigate calls and emails to your customer service staff. What’s key here is making sure that communications aren’t just customer facing, but internal as well. A website migration is a big change that has the potential to impact every single employee, so make sure they have the information they need.

Testing and more testing
Once you have the site locked down and backed up and service and network connectivity established on the new provider hardware, it’s time to copy over the data and start the testing process. There are no shortcuts here, testing should be absolutely thorough, because any problems you don’t find, your customers surely will. That’s so important I am going to say it again- any problem you don’t find, your customers will. Enlist the entire organization, the more eyeballs the better, and review everything from copy to image links to form functionality and every other aspect of the site. This is when you can avoid things like two days of lost sales because of an incorrect IP address buried in a mail script. Make your DNS changes only once you are absolutely sure that everything is 100% correct. Getting it right the first time means exactly that, so don’t pull the trigger until you are sure.

You have a safety net
After a site migration project, the last thing anyone wants to consider is moving back to the previous platform, which now seems creaky and old compared to the nice shiny new hardware and clean code of the migrated site. In the event of big unforeseen problems (massive load problems, broken routing, scripting incompatibilities, etc), resist the temptation to work on them in a live environment. The IT landscape is littered with the reputations of managers who bet on ‘a quick fix’ that dragged out to days or worse. The old infrastructure worked, so change your DNS back, regroup, and figure out what needs to be fixed without the pressure of crisis management decision making. Of course, to do this, you’ll want to make sure that safety net is still in place. It’s a good idea to allow for a month (or two) of overlapping service as an insurance policy.

Don’t go it alone
Careful planning and execution is the key to a successful site migration, but there’s one more thing that smart IT professionals rely on- they get help. This is where NaviSite comes in. We do this sort of thing for a living. Our Always There™ support staff can guide you through your migration process from start to finish. We help you with the pre-planning process all the way through the ongoing administration and analysis of the new site, and our highly trained fully certified technicians are ready to help with any issue that may come up.

Right the first time
There’s a lot riding on a site migration, and it needs to be right the first time. With NaviSite as your managed dedicated hosting partner, the process can be smooth and easy, transparent to users, and you will immediately benefit from our enterprise grade support and infrastructure. Whatever the motivation for moving your site or server infrastructure, it’s time to stop thinking and start acting, and we’re ready to help.

What should SMBs consider when shopping for long term provider and vendor relationships? One item that should be on the top of every list is longevity. It takes more than smoke and mirrors to have survived the dot com implosion of the late 90’s, much less thrive in today’s rocky economy. A provider that has weathered tough times is one that knows how to retain customers, and you do that by delivering.

It’s also a good idea to judge your vendor partners and providers by the company they keep. Specifically, who are their customers? A provider that can meet the demands of an enterprise multi-million dollar organization will have world class backend infrastructure. That’s infrastructure that you can leverage at a fraction of the cost.

The danger here is that for many companies with enterprise customers, the support and resources for smaller customers is limited. If you can’t get a living person on the phone in the event of a problem, millions of dollars in technology don’t mean a thing.

Don’t just consider client lists either. Your provider’s vendor partners are a solid indicator as to their performance and status in the industry. Companies like Microsoft, HP, Intel, Cisco and others won’t enter into high profile partner relationships with dodgy providers with poor customer service reputations.

NaviSite has over 10 years of consistently delivering world-class, enterprise-grade services to businesses and organizations of all sizes. We’ve flourished in the worst business environment in decades for a simple reason- we combine best in class technology with Always There® service and support, delivering a customer experience that is unequaled.

More than 1,500 customers that include HBO, The Salvation Army, Blue Cross Blue Shield, various levels of government and many others have discovered the difference that NaviSite and Always There® support can make. Our products and services are scalable from small sole proprietorship to large companies with thousands of employees, and every customer receives the same level of service and support.

NaviSite’s status as a Microsoft Gold Certified partner, as well as relationships with VMware, HP, SUN, Intel and other leading IT infrastructure providers are real world validation that you and your business are in good hands. No other hosting provider offers you more or better services than NaviSite. It’s the kind of track record that can only be earned over time.

Here’s the problem- even if it was a double your money back guarantee, in most cases it’s not going to make up for the lost business and/or productivity that resulted from the outage. When it comes to SLAs, small businesses and IT managers don’t really care about getting their money back- what they care about is not having any downtime. At NaviSite, we believe that the best SLA is the one you don’t have to collect on.

Our SLA’s give you and your employees the power – and the peace of mind – you need to run an efficient, effective, profitable business. Your SLA guarantees include:

* 100% Network uptime
* 100% Infrastructure availability
* 4-hour hardware replacement guarantee
* 24/7/365 support from our “Always There” team of professionals.

At the heart of the NaviSite 100% uptime SLA is a promise, and it takes more than good intentions and refunds to live up to that promise. It takes enterprise grade hardware, applications, and network infrastructure. More importantly, it takes a team of highly trained and professional engineers and support personnel, and an unwavering commitment to world class service. We call our support Always There for a reason.

For most things, the difference between 99.9% and 100% is minimal. In our business, it’s everything. If that percentage point is important to your business too, then it’s time to put the NaviSite 100% SLA to work for you.